Where Do You Find Inspiration?

If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, what makes these leading slam artists sweat?

 

Nasty, Brutish & Short: a Puppet Cabaret #Chicago - Davey K, Ian Fullerton, Stephen Lieto, 2011 Photo: Links Hall

Deborah Hunt, curator of Sobre la Mesa #SanJuan

The shortness of time inspires me. To create a succinct piece that adds to an evening’s intrigue gets my juices going.

Valerie Meiss, curator of the Wham Bam Puppet Slam #Asheville

beauty, chaos, unfinished stories in my head, songs, friends of mine, relationships, odd facts I recall from history class... anything and everything!

Alissa Hunnicut, guest curator of New Brew #Brooklyn

For me it almost always starts with a song.  Something that when I hear the song I "see" something, usually a moment, a single image that becomes the jumping off point visually.

Lana Schwarcz, curator of Slam Noir #Melbourne

I was inspired by attending the National Puppet Slam in Atlanta when I visited in 2011. I saw the great work that was created by the themed slams in the US and the strong community that it created, and I started to feel upset that we didn't have that same sense of community here in Australia. 

Alexander Winfield, curator of the Pirate Puppet Cabaret #London

Inspiration can come from many sources: a banal occurrence seen while walking home, a dream, a piece from a history book. Who knows? Inspiration is a funny beast.

Carole D’Agostino, performer-at-large #NYC

Different things. One of the most common questions I get is “What style do you work in?” This depends on the story I need to tell. I have a peacock marionette that was inspired by a trip to a sculpture garden. My shadow show about science was developed at the Puppet Playlist, so music inspired that one. My old show about Icarus was inspired by my father's death. It's all life based, like anything. I won't just throw a piece together for nothing though. All of my shows are storyboarded, well rehearsed and have something valuable to offer the audience.

Beau Brow, curator of the  Puckin’ Fuppet Show  #Atlanta 

For me it was crucial to have a deadline. I would love to be the kind of artist who is inspired to build puppets and write shows because it just came to me, but I’m not.  I have to sit down, usually with someone else and say, “Okay we need a show.”  The structure of the slams gives me the kick in the pants and I need to write something.  Since puppetry is the synthesis of all art forms (visual art, voice, and movement), it opens so many doors to so many different kinds of artists.  Puppetry allows us to tell any story we can imagine… ANY. The possibilities are truly endless. The only other art form that I think allows that is animation.  I would love to have the patience to do animation, but I don’t.  So puppetry allows me to tell those stories. However most of those stories aren’t an hour long.  So how else can I get them front of a live audience? Puppet Slam. 

Evan O'Television, host of Blood from A Turnip #Providence

I wish I knew where my ideas came from so that I might burn a fire under them and become magically way more prolific.   Most of my ideas are about situations I can imagine the TV and I struggling with onstage.  If you have seen any of my performances, it's pretty clear that they are all built around a some performance goal that is thwarted or that the TV and I ultimately become distracted from in some way, or ultimately fail at. 

I also always like to play with breaking the audience boundaries and pursuing new ways to interact with the audience, because the more I do that, the less restricted and trapped I feel by the fact that I am performing with a recording.  Finally, in recent years, I have looked for new ways that circumstantially or plot-wise my live-performer character can sometimes get the upper hand or grab some power from the TV, because the Evan on the television is so often the more charismatic comedic star of my show.   I like to occasionally have the straight-man win one 

Jessica Simon, curator of Nasty, Brutish & Short: A Puppet Cabaret #Chicago

I'm inspired by (and a bit jealous of) Connor Hopkins and Carolin Reck down in Austin [hosts of Austin Puppet Incident].  Not only are they creating awesome long-form work, but they've created a great little puppetry community that works together creating short pieces for their slams.  From what I understand they host regular open shop nights and anyone who wants to can come in try something out.  I'd love to have a regular workshop time for people to collaborate.  There is somewhat of a community here in Chicago, and it's growing [with Puppet Meltdown], but I'd love to mix it up even more and have a dedicated time and place for people to come together.  

Special thanks to Paul Eide from Puppetry Journal for helping to edit this entry.

Fabulous Failures & What Can We Learn?

What can we learn from our mistakes?  Leading puppet slam curators and artists open up to reflect on some fabulous failures and spectacular slam disasters and what can be learned. Have you had a fabulous failure at a slam? Join the conversation on our Facebook Page and share your story! 
 

Austin Puppet Incident #Austin
Amanda Maddock, Jessica Simon & Caroline Reck, 2011, Photo: Chris Owen

Alissa Hunnicut, guest curator of New Brew #Brooklyn

Mostly you learn that it's live theater and anything can happen.  So think on your feet when there are technical glitches and be honest in your performance.  You also learn pretty quickly what doesn't work in a slam context when you have no control over what comes before your performance..

I don't think any of them have been disastrous. Some of them have pieces that are "less successful" than others partly because it might be a less curated slam or a slam that really welcomes less experienced performers, but that's the good part about a slam.  

Everyone can try something out and if it doesn't really work, the audience is on to a new thing pretty quickly. Like we all say, "too short to suck."

Gepetta, Performer-At-Large #Philadelphia

I think I count on failure or at least making mistakes to some degree. A lot of my stories are very wordy, more poetic than funny, and I often forget my lines, though if I can quip with the audience its okay.  A lot of mistakes graduate into being essential parts of the show.  Recently, I lit my hair on fire during a performance at a crowded loft. That wasn’t at a Slam, though I think it would have gone over better if it had been.

Roxie Myhrum, Curator of Puppet Showplace Slam #Brookline 

I once put together a slam with a lot of artists who typically did shows in all different styles of puppetry, but somehow I overlooked the fact that the pieces they wanted to do for the slam were all shadow puppet acts. Oops. After that I implemented a more thorough tech form. We also once had a speaker fall on an audience member. Now we warn people who sit in the front row.   

Evan O'Television, host of Blood from a Turnip #Providence

One of Kristin McLean's occasional collaborators was the director of The Revolving Museum - an organization that curated site specific shows at various different locations all around Boston.  The director of the Revolving Museum had set up a show for First Night (New Year's Eve) Boston that he populated primarily with Puppet Slam performers.   He asked me to perform at it.  It was at the Cyclorama in Boston and there was a very cool set, and we were all in different rooms of a mocked-up house.  People were encouraged to wander around and it was definitely a very cool set up if you were a more interactive performer.  But the problem was that I was performing a 15 minute version of the "Ex Machina" show I described earlier.  And this piece also now included an audience-plant routine.  The biggest issue is that my pieces are narrative and definitely require the undivided attention of an audience.  Here, we were playing a venue where people would essentially wander through look at what we were doing for about 2 minutes and then move on. Because I perform with a recording it's difficult to stop or start over and nearly impossible to improvise.  So we just kept performing it over and over, often with no one in our space and just me and my friend and collaborator Mark Myatt (who was my audience "plant" originally intended to blend in with the never-constant audience).  Most of the time we were performing for no one, or else for people who took a brief interest akin to viewing animals in a zoo.. After performing in this show I have always taken pains to clarify that any show I am booked at is organized as a theatrical performance and not an "installation" style environment.

Alexander Winfield, curator Pirate Puppet Cabaret #London

I can’t say I’ve ever been to a disastrous Puppet Slam, sorry! One slam I did attend was a bit awkward: it emphasized audience participation, insisting space be left for the public to contribute to the work. Unfortunately it underestimated the audience’s bravery, leading to long passages of awkward silence!

Kat Pleviak, curator of Puppet Meltdown #Chicago 

I was in a slam at a puppet festival and we were asked to bring two pieces, one of which was cut because the slam went to long. The piece we did show was too small for the space to be seen by anyone in the venue so no one got to enjoy it.   

A note to producers: Your slam performers are your guests and it should be your number one goal to help them succeed and have a great experience. A note to performers: be true to your work. If you walk into an event and can see your piece won't work, pull it. It does not help you to do a piece that disappoints based on a technicality. Know your work and show it to it's best.

Enda O. Breadon, curator Kolohe Puppet Slam #Honolulu

Well, just this week I feel like I’ve experienced one of my biggest failures to date.  Between what felt like the great success of the first slam in February, I ran into some problems.  As I’ve said, I just directed Inspector General for TAG, a show with live actors and two different kinds of puppets that play minor characters.  Literally, the night Inspector opened several of TAG’s board members complained that sock puppets have no place on the TAG stage and are “not to the quality of what we do.”  The poster and all the promotional material used had the sock puppets to promote the show, but apparently that somehow got past the attention of some board members.  And they apparently hadn’t talked to the Artistic Director, who’d been talking excitedly about the puppets for around six months before the show ever went into rehearsal. At this point, I must take pains to again thank Brad Powell, TAG’s Artistic Director.  He went to the mat to defend both the puppets in Inspector and to defend the slam to his board.  But after some of the longest days I’ve ever experienced, it was clear that it was not in the best interest of the slam or of TAG to hold a puppet slam at a theatre where there were hostile board members. . .

A friend and fellow artist here in Honolulu gave me a “buck up” talk the other day saying that this was a lesson about focusing on the kind of work you want to do and making your own opportunities.  I guess that’s as good as a lesson as any.  This is all just in the last week, maybe after a few months of reflection I’ll have a real good perspective about what the moral of this tale is.  

Again, if there are other curators who have walked through similar experiences please, please, please email or call me.   I’d love to hear how others handled it so I can properly reflect and learn from the situation.

Lana Schwarcz, curator of Slam Noir #Melbourne

Hmmm... I think we've had a couple of pieces go longer than five minutes, and that was tough. I don't feel comfortable to name names or even describe these shows, but sometimes new pieces (which is what they are for the slams) can drag on a bit - the fat needs to be cut from them.  If there is one thing I have really learned from Pam Arciero (and by gosh there were many many things learned from that Hawaiian goddess) it's that things really have to be too short to suck.  So I think in the future, we really stick to that 5-minute rule. If it doesn't fit in 5 minutes, it doesn't go on. It makes the artist really think about what absolutely needs to be in there. Although sometimes that still gets ignored....

Beau Brown, curator of the  Puckin’ Fuppet Show, 

The Puppet Slam at DragonCon and the National Puppet Slam  #Atlanta 

Never try and simulate the sound of someone’s pelvis cracking by breaking celery into a microphone. It won’t work. 

Valerie Meiss, curator of the Wham Bam! Puppet Slam #Asheville

Oh wow... maybe my reluctance to say means that the wound is still fresh? . . Lets just say, technical requirements and Murphy's Law make wretched bedfellows. I have learned to cope with technical disasters in fun and friendly ways, to curb egos in a non-defamatory manner, and to (most importantly) take control of a situation (which is easier said than done), but I have certainly learned its importance

Oh, also, don't ever ever use a smoke machine!

Carole D'Agostino, Performer-At-Large #NYC

I succeed and fail at each event. I now always travel with my own tables, tape, extension cords, light bulb replacements, shadow screen replacements, scissors, sharpies, wipes, etc etc etc, because at each and every venue there has been something wrong or missing and I don't want my performance to suffer because the venue or I am ill prepared. Professionalism can only come by learning from failures.  

 

Jessica Simon, curator of Nasty, Brutish & Short Puppet Cabaret #Chicago 

[taken slighly out of context]  I got a bruise on my head from a flying piece of chocolate at the National Slam in Atlanta...

Aargh!: The Alexander Winfield Story #London Part 2

Alexander Winfield is a Bermudian-born puppeteer and theatre maker who worked as a freelance puppeteer for six years in Canada. He recently made the move to London to complete an MA at the Central School of Speech and Drama and continues to perform at festivals, theatres, and puppet slams around Europe. With Cryptid Theatre he recently helped host the first Pirate Puppet Cabaret at the Battersea Barge. He has a fondness for dreams, nightmares, the surreal and the stranger corners of human life.

Continued from Part 1 . . .

Marsian: What is the funniest, freakiest, edgiest, or weirdest  piece you have seen?

AW: The Left Hand of Frank by Frank Meschkuleit, a fellow Canadian: it’s essentially a one-man cabaret show and is alternatively hilarious and thoughtful. I’d also have to mention Famous Puppet Death Scenes, by the Old Trout Theatre in Calgary.

M: I love the Trouts! I performed with them at the Dolly Wiggler Cabaret..

AW: No one seems to have heard of them here, but the show is a tour-de-force of puppetry styles, full of variety and humour, as well as several truly moving pieces. With lots of Puppet Death.

M: What was the worst puppet slam you’ve been to?

AW: I can’t say I’ve ever been to a disastrous Puppet Slam, sorry! One slam I did attend was a bit awkward: it emphasized audience participation, insisting space be left for the public to contribute to the work. Unfortunately it underestimated the audience’s bravery, leading to long passages of awkward silence!

M: Is there a slam circuit around London?

AW: One of the advantages of London is that it is so very close to so many places. Europe is full of puppet festivals (not quite slams, but still), and with a bit of planning you could fill a year with touring. Little Angel does host puppet slams, though it calls it a scratch night: the Hatch festival. Everything is a festival over here, makes it sound proper. The Tara Arts Studio, in the south of London, has hosted Puppetry Snax, a slam/scratch night produced in collaboration with the Puppet Centre. The Puppet Centre and the Battersea Arts Centre is also known to host slams/festivals that are puppet friendly.

M: Interesting that they call them “scratch” nights in London - sounds itchy. We have have Pandemics here.. Tell us about a fabulous failure and what you've learned from it.

AW: I’ve learned to be wary of improv, and of audience participation. You can meet an audience, bring a puppet to them, but relying on them to supply half a story is dangerous, and in any case it’s probably unfair to charge a person a ticket price if they’re doing half the work.  I saw an improv act kept asking the audience questions about where to proceed next – it was difficult, and the audience were getting tired of it. I learned that while improv with puppets can be exciting, it’s always important to present ‘something’ to an audience, and to make the interaction feel like part of the show rather than work asked of them.

M: What pieces do you have in circulation to perform in slams?

AW: I have All Hail Ye Mighty Lords of Nowhere,  a post-apocalyptic puppet show that I’ve described as William Blake meets Punch and Judy. Two demons are all that remain on the earth, and realize that by wiping out the human race they annihilated all chance they have of ever having fun again. There is The Man Who Lived in the Road about a man who wakes up in the middle of a road with no memory of who he is or how he got there. With no other humans about, he learns to live a life of loneliness. 

M: That kinda hits close to home. Anything else? 

AW: Then there is Horus the God, about the Egyptian god Horus, now retired and living in a council flat.

M: What inspires you to create a puppet slam piece?

"Inspiration can come from many sources: a banal occurrence seen while walking home, a dream, a piece from a history book. Who knows? Inspiration is a funny beast."

AW:  In Malaysia they call artistic inspiration ‘agin’, meaning, literally, ‘the wind’ It can drive a man to make miracles, but if neglected it can drive an artist mad, it can eat him alive from the inside. So perhaps that’s the answer: I don’t want to be eaten alive.

M: Why do you think Puppet Slams are important?

AW: Puppet slams provide a space where beginning puppeteers can suck with permission. No live performance can have its kinks ironed out without test trials before a live audience, and slams allow puppeteers a space to hurl themselves at the public, and feel what parts of a show work and what parts do not. Puppet Cabarets will continue parallel to the rising popularity of live puppetry – and help to spread a love of puppetry to new audiences.  

M: That's lovely! And what advice do you have for up and coming slam artists?

AW: Don’t be afraid of failing miserably, or looking like an idiot. There is nothing so dangerous, nor full of potential, as a man unafraid of looking like an idiot.  Try not to make a habit of it, is all.

M: Anything else we should know?

AW: I have a strange fascination with Cephalopods, and would love to do a show featuring a giant squid (one of the great marionette performances on film belongs to the giant squid in 20,000 leagues under the sea!). Other than that, expect the unexpected, and always bring an umbrella wherever you go.

 

Aargh!: The Alexander Winfield Story #London Part 1

Alexander Winfield is a Bermudian-born puppeteer and theatre maker who worked as a freelance puppeteer for six years in Canada. He recently made the move to London to complete an MA at the Central School of Speech and Drama and continues to perform at festivals, theatres, and puppet slams around Europe. With Cryptid Theatre he recently helped host the first Pirate Puppet Cabaret at the Battersea Barge. He has a fondness for dreams, nightmares, the surreal and the stranger corners of human life.

Marsian: I'm so glad our mutual friend Andrew Young from the Puppet Vision Blog put us in touch and told us about your Pirate Puppet Cabaret!

Alexander Winfield:  Andrew is definitely one to watch.

M: How did you go from Bermuda to London?

AW: Via a long, twisting road. I lived and worked as a puppeteer in Toronto for several years, before heading to the UK to take an MA in theatre studies at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Intrigued by the explosion in puppet theatre that spreading across Europe at the moment, I decided to stick around.

M: How did you enter the world of puppetry what was it like to start hosting puppet cabarets?  What other cities have you performed at puppet slams in?

AW: I’ve always had a fascination for puppets. I remember putting on impromptu puppet shows with my brother, using our bunk bed as a stage.

M: How Bromantic..

AW: I re-entered the world of puppetry as an adult shortly after seeing some Hun Lakhon Lek - a form of Thai Puppetry – enacting the story of the Ramayana.  It was absurdly entertaining.  I then made several short films that featured puppetry, including Christ in Wood, which featured a wooden Christ coming to life and being a general nuisance.  

M: Yes, we have a contingent of Bible-puppeteers in the States, but your puppet flick sounds way cooler.

AW: That all got me thinking about puppetry again, and eventually I was inspired to start working with puppets by any means necessary. I didn’t really care for the hows of it – I started with street shows performed in a stage made of burlap. I was very poor at the time, and could afford little else. I was finally making money off my art, a fine thing, and that was the start.

M: I love burlap to riches stories! So after you got street cred, then you got kidnapped by pirates?

AW: The Pirate Puppet Cabaret was the first puppet slam I helped produce.  It was a lot of work!  There are many puppeteers in London, though they tend to be a scattered and insular breed, like all puppeteers. As a newcomer to the city, and unattached to any larger organizations or theatres whose name might be recognized, it was a challenge to get puppeteers to perform with little unknown me.  Keeping the event profit-share, ensuring the puppeteers aren’t working for free, helped a lot.

M: Have you performed at other puppet slams?

AW: As for when I’ve performed at Puppet Slams, I don’t know I’ve performed at many outside of London (they seem to be, still, somewhat rare creatures). I’ve performed my own shows at festivals and theatres in Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo (Ontario), London (UK), Oxford (UK), Charleville-Mezieres (France), Tolouse (France) and Hamilton (Bermuda) among others.

M: Damn!  And you after all that, you hosted the Pirate Puppet Cabaret.

AW: My slam was undoubtedly smaller than most other slams I’ve seen, not surprising as it was the first I hosted. The space was quite unique – the Battersea Barge, a barge outfitted as a bar/restaurant, at dock on the southern banks of the Thames. To access it you had to walk through about a half mile of alleyways and lamp-lit construction sites. That provided much of our atmosphere.

“At no other slam I’ve attended were the acts interrupted by the actions of waves against the barge. Our sea-legs were sorely tested.”

M: And how did the pirates get involved?
AW: I’ve always been interested in pirates as icons. Scabbish and unruly, the pirate ship was one of the first functioning democracies in western society, with captains elected by popular vote. Ruthless and violent, they were also known as ‘free men’, men (and women) who had made a break with society and large, and sailed under their own flags. These seeming contradictions have a particular resonance now, when there is much talk of society growing colder and harder, and where there seem to be no free seas left to sail in.

M: Tell me about it! No, really, tell me about some of the acts..

AW: What we had was very strong – an excellent, atmospheric piece carved out of lights and cardboard, a puppet strip-tease, and a commentary on humankind by demonic puppets. The cardboard piece was by Max McBride, a San Francisco artist and puppeteer whose specialty is making miracles out of ‘mundane’ materials. The strip tease was by Aya Nakamura, a member of Rouge 28 theatre, whose work can be seen at www.ayanakamura.com

M: Join us for part 2 of our very special interview with Andrew Winfield...